In desperation, we turned to Val Nark in the hope that she might give us some of her 'own-made'. Of course, given her plans for stocking her farm shop freezer with choice 'Spring lamb' (see recent posts), we knew that she might give us advice that would finish him off. But we were prepared to run that risk.
'Tuppence is diseased Tuppy,' said Geoffrey, flapping from mantlepiece to window to arm of settee, and back again, as he always does when he's anxious, 'And what's more he's pumped full of Lem-sip. He's not organic any more. Val won't want him in her freezer. I'm sure of it.'
'All right. Let's bite the bullet and go up to the tourist car park. She'll probably be in the post office yurt today. I think it's her day for posting out orders from her Ebay wholefoods shop.'
'Try creating an ersatz sweat lodge of course,' snapped Val, when we turned up, shame-faced and nervous. 'And ply him with Junior Aspirin. The Monster Munch carry-on is simply the ravings of a spoilt and horribly precocious child, and must be ignored at all costs. Don't you two have ANY common sense? Not that I need to ask. You're as thick as two short planks. Three, probably. If not four. Or indeed five.'
'I've already given him my tartan knee rug. And we've got him on a Lem-sip drip,' I replied, dander up.
'Yes the laudanum didn't work,' added Geoffrey, 'We thought perhaps an opium tabloid and some senna tea...well perhaps not the senna tea...' I gave him a look, and he fell silent.
Val gripped a piece of string between her teeth and glared at us as she ripped the last piece of brown packing tape from its cardboard roll.
'Oh stop being pathetic and get on with it. I've six boxes of goji berry flapjacks to send out to valued customers in the next post and I don't want any bad feedback. Some of us DO have a life you know!'
And she padded barefoot across the multi-coloured rag rug flooring to the back of the yurt, and an untidy pile of books which Dave sells - or tries to - online. 'Here. You owe me five pounds and think yourselves lucky I'm not charging you postage. I know you haven't got the money on you and I know you think you'll get away with not paying me. But you're completely wrong. I will hound you until I get my money and I am not put off by extortionate Small Claims Court charges. It's the principle that matters to me. I expect to be paid tomorrow morning at first light. Now go away.' She threw us a slim, tattered, paperback volume entitled 'How to Cure Everything with an Ersatz Sweat Lodge', by Mrs Stanley Wrench, dated 1933.
More on what we did next, later...........
or find more Tales in my e-books, on Amazon, here...http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sea-Penguin-Part-Five-Selections-ebook/dp/B00FW19E0Y/ref=pd_rhf_gw_p_img_2?ie=UTF8&refRID=1HAYA6ZJ8R7A2B0XRWNX
